Goodwill to Condos on 8th Street

By Brian J Pape, AIA

A new luxury condo project is currently under construction at 44 West 8th Street that will be nearly as tall as the new seven-story neighbor at 181 MacDougal Street, by Morris Adjmi Architects.

Historically, this stretch of 8th Street, between Sixth Avenue and Fifth Avenue, has seen its conditions ebb and flow. The Greenwich Village Historic District Designation Report of 1969 describes the history.

“In 1633, Wouter Van Twiller, Director General of the Province of New Netherland, built his country home on this site (near the present MacDougal Street), by the old Indian Road. It was still standing as late as 1795. West Eighth Street was known as Clinton Place, named for DeWitt Clinton in 1842, when largely residential, then received its present name in 1898. This is a street (in 1969) of startling contrasts; it is full of small shops and restaurants. The lack of any controlling design or height accounts for the ragged appearance of the street today. Each building is occupied by several small stores.”

A pair of handsome Greek Revival houses facing MacDougal Street were built in 1846, the site of Nos. 179 & 181, later replaced with ‘taxpayers’ (one-story utility buildings, big enough to at least pay the taxes).

Nearby at 52 and 54 8th Street, between the stores a passageway led back to Clinton Court in the interior of the block, (now closed) which held many small dwellings for workers. The double lot for 44 & 46 W. 8th Street had one half built with a five-story flat in 1851 for a grocer and a coachman, while the other half was occupied by stables lit by skylights. Then a 1-story taxpayer was built on both lots in 1956, most recently occupied by a Goodwill second-hand resale shop. On the west at 48-50 W. 8th Street, a pair of five-story, brownstone flat houses (the early name for apartment houses) has cornices in the Queen Anne style, a new fashion when it was built in 1876.

As presented to the Community Board 2 Landmarks Committee in May of 2024, this 44 West 8th Street project features several noteworthy design aspects. The developer, T30 Capital, hired Idan Naor of Inworkshop Architecture for the 74-foot-tall structure, complimenting the motif and height of 181 MacDougal Street to the east, by Morris Adjmi. The new building cornice also nearly matches the 1876 building height on the west side, creating a very harmonious street wall.

What may be most noticeable will be the depth of the red brick façade of the new six-story residential building, with individual windows set back about 16” from the face of wall, creating deep shadow patterns. The Landmarks Committee recommended the Petersen Tegl Kolumba Handmade face brick, 20.8” (L) x 4.3” (W) x1.5” (H) be replaced with more modular sized brick. As a ‘bonus,’ the architect chose a window configuration in the upper right quadrant that hints at the original “void” there of the old pre-1956 buildings. The ground floor and penthouse facades are differentiated by terra-cotta facings in a pink granite tone, also featuring deep setbacks to the glazing. There seems to be no attempt to provide safety height guardrails at the roof areas in the early documents; hopefully that will be addressed in final plans.

We don’t usually describe the floor plans of new construction, but we do want to note some highlights here. On the ground floor are 3,237 square feet of retail space and 432 square feet of ‘community’ space next to the residential lobby; stairs lead down to basement storage and meeting rooms, filling the entire site. At 50’ wide, the building will encompass 28,846 square feet and yield five condominium units with an average scope of 3,733 square feet each.

Though obviously the developer could have maximized the number of units with small apartments, say four to a floor or 22 total, the choice here is for the fewer, five large units.

The second floor is a four-bedroom unit with 3.5 bathrooms, and private terrace at back; the kitchen is in a separate room. The 3rd and 4th floors are also one unit each, four bedrooms and 3.5 baths, no terrace. The 5th floor introduces a very different plan, divided into a two-bedroom, two bath in front (street side), and a duplex at the back, with three bedrooms and three baths on this floor. The duplex is joined to the 6th floor with a large, almost 10’ diameter circular stair in the hallway, arriving on the 6th floor between a large living room in front and dining room/kitchen/pantry at back. The 6th floor penthouse also has a bedroom and bath, and a full-width terrace at the street side. Many rooms feature pocket doors, not the usual swing door type.

We wonder if the developer has tapped into a study that showed a high demand for four-bedroom apartments near the NYU campus?

West 8th Street has positively come a long way, ready to meet the next century of Village life.